Cries for Justice

Cries for Justice

Much can be said about the famous civil rights movement of America. To its ongoing struggles and fights against segregation, to its breathtaking heroes of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Moes Wright, Malcolm X and many more. According to Professor Fields, “A social movement is a sustained interaction between people with power and people without power” (Lecture 04/06/06). There are six elements to the anatomy of social movements, but the two most important elements are: Pre-existing forms of association and organization, and Crisis of Event Motivating People to Act. This extraordinary civil rights movement (mainly of African decent) proved to America and to the world that a collectivized body of individuals being unified for a common purpose/goal can either destroy oppression for the good of all human beings or regulate oppression. In this case the civil rights movement was to make sure that segregation amongst any individual, particularly the black community is wrong and that freedom, belongs to every individual. I will be arguing that social movements, (particularly the civil rights movement) impacted society to change their beliefs, and their ideology of freedom.

The vast system of Jim Crow’s legal segregation and disfranchisement (Chappell 2) was the so-called notion of “Separate but equal,” revealed an assumption to Americans (mainly Caucasian men and women) that they are the superior race. In 1954, Brown versus the Board of Education was to argue that the separate but equal notion was unconstitutional because separate is not equal, it is unequal. Two critical organizations of the civil rights movement were the NAACP and SNIC. These organizations helped shape the black community to dismantle the thought of segregation being constitutional thus, resulting in a major change within the society of America. The outcome was crucial because if African Americans decided to not fight for their rights as human beings and as American citizens, then all the sweat and suffrage would be in vain.

The “sin of segregation” as Chappell puts it argues, “We need to abandon this sin (3&4). This long fight for de-segregation changes the beliefs of American society by the conviction that God is on their side. As Chappell states about experiencing and witnessing such expressions, “gave participants confidence” (5), regardless if they were to die. The crisis of this movement, which motivated the African American community to fight against segregation, was that black men and women were treated unequally because of the color of their skin. Certain institutional organizations such as, churches helped unify this motivation of freedom because this was there meeting place for inspiration, encouragement, challenge, and hope. As a result of this structural condition, enabled a set of democratic freedom. On the other hand, white churches displayed hypocrisy because in Christianity, the religion emphasizes that all men and women are created equal regardless of race, ethnicity, and the color of one’s skin. Their repressive condition created a lot of unhappiness and dissatisfaction